Courchevel avalanche

A snowHead

Just got back from a very interesting week in courchevel. First half of week was very cold which kept the snow in reasonable condition but it was a bit rocky and icy in some places. However Friday night we got a 40cm dump and it kept snowing most of saturday and sunday on and off. Saturday was a good powder day high up, although you couldnt see much but heavy lower down. Another 10cm saturday night this time much drier snow and sunday was a perfect powder day except of the huge avalanche risk-risk 4. The snow pack was very unstable. I did a little off piste in lovely powder but always worried about the stability, untill I was doing one bit under a chairlift (suise chair 1850) when I heard some shouts from above me telling me there have been an avalanche lower down underneath the chairlift and someone was buried. There were 3 skiers and one of them had set it off and was buried. I was the first one on the scene and could't really do alot as didn't have probe etc but tried searching with my poles. It was so scary knowing someone was trapped underneath us. The guy under the snow didnt have a transceiver and the rest of the group had no avalanche safety equipment. Fortunately as it was underneath a chairlift ski instructors and ski patrol starting arriving with probes and dogs etc, although it seemed forever for them to get there. Eventually 20minutes later there were enough ski patrol to form a line with probes to search for the person. At which point they ordered everyone without a transceiver to get out of there. I thought that the guy under there would not come out alive as they had been so long under there. But after 30minutes they located him and dug him out at which time a helicopter arrived with paramedics and oxygen etc. By this time I was away from it on the piste and I heard he was alive but in a very bad state. I don't no if he survived or not after being dug out but it definately taught me a lesson - To never go off piste without all the gear and pay attention to closed runs and avalanche risk numbers they are there for a reason, however tempting the powder looks. The experience really shook me up and it will be a while until I venture off piste again. I don;t know if anyone else heard about it and know if the person survived?

A snowHead

david duval, Thanks for relating your experience. It does indeed seem a long time for someone to be trapped under the snow and come out alive.

Anyone with any further information on this incident?.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Thank you for this stirring tale david duval. I'd love to be able to give u a happy ending for it but it would appear from this story on Piste Hors that this is not to be.

A timely warning for us all.

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Please don't think this is in any way a critisism of David or anybody else but it is an experience like this and continuing stories of this type that mean that I always ski with probe, shovel and beep even when I have no intention of going off piste. If you have the gear and know how tom use it, take it with just in case. It might be that your life will depend on somebody doing the same.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

SimonN, me too, even when I'm playing on blue runs with beginners or whatever, I always wear my transceiver and sack with probe & shovel.

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With six avalanche deaths in the French Alps over the New Year there's some discussion in the French press about the risks and causes.

Here's an article in Le Figaro.

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I've probably skied that line about 200 times. And never carrying avalanche gear. It's normally a mogul field, it's between pistes and under a chair. I'd always thought of t as one of the safest bits of "off-piste" in Courchevel.

The more I think about this the more i wonder if the pisteurs had done their job properly. If that slope presented avalanche risk then it overhangs the lower section of the Suisses piste and therefore the piste should have been closed.

There is another line dropping down from the top section of piste "M" to the Suisse chair which is steeper, much less skied and feels much more avalanche prone - david d - I presume you don't mean this one?

This will be the prod to make me ski with the kit routinely. Now I just need to pursuade my mates...

J

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A DVD well worth buying (translated into English) here:

Transcripts in English well worth a read. A couple reproduced here, personal accounts, very sobering indeed.

PG, I would stick another very into "very sobering". Shocked

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The SCGB are very good in respect to avalanche equipment. Transceivers were supplied to all those with the rep last year in Grindelwald and people were shown how to use them.

I must admit that I do not own any such kit.

Within sight of lifts it is sometimes tempting to think ' How dangerous can it be ?'

This tale demonstrates the folly of that view.

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I'm with SimonN & Plake in that Deb & I always have tranceivers on us & a shovel/probe in our packs - & to some ridicule at times.

We've only just started skiing off-piste but as I've seen the remnants of two small avalanches that both partially covered pistes that we'd regularly skied (both in Courchevel BTW). This experience, combined with what I learned on a recent BASP First Aid Course made me decide it was worthwhile. We both carry backpacks anyway so it's no bother & the cost is minimal when compared to the overall cost of our skiing.

In Kitzbuhel last week I saw two skiers in a restuarant who both wore beeps but neither had backpacks so I presume that they didn't have shovels or probes. How selfish is that?

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You know it makes sense.

A few seasons ago I caused/was caught up in a little slide at the edge of a piste. Just a tiny bump at the side of a French blue that I'd slid up onto to get out of the way of a busy run (not all borders sit in the middle). As I stopped, I became disorientated, I couldn't tell if I were moving or not, almost a weightless sensation as I was carried about 10 feet (that's all) down the side of this bump. As I moved forward, my board settled down through the snow until when I stopped, still upright, I was sunk to mid-thigh.
I couldn't even use my body weight to enlarge the space around my legs and it took me at least 30 minutes to dig my way out with my hands. Anyone who thinks that avalanche snow is just like the stuff that falls from the sky is deeply mistaken, it's as hard and difficult to move as wet sand and it leaches heat from your body faster than you can imagine.

A tiny lesson seriously taken to heart. Avalanches don't need to be big to hurt you.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

A snowHead

It wasn't that high up under the suise chair it was lower down where they had accessed the slope from the top of piste M. This run was closed and loads of warnings of avalanches. When the piste control came you could tell they were mad that a)they had skied that face and b)they didn't have a tranceiver or anything else. I would definately advise that people ski with a probe and shovel aswell because if i had had one i could have started searching properly for where they were. So even though it might not be one of your party that is trapped it could be someone else and you just happen to be very close to the avalanche and therefore a lifesaver.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I looked at that slope this morning. The area really isn't that extreme, and I would suggest that this should be a serious warning to all that wandering even a short distance off piste can be fatal. This incident has certainly alarmed me. Sad

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SimonN,

You make a fair point except:

I never suggested it wasn't the skiers responsibility. Clearly it was.

My point was that one of the jobs pisteurs have to do is consider the possibility that skiers make bad decisions that threaten other skiers. I have know lifts to be shut to prevent access to off-piste areas (and in the process to on-piste areas) because of the potential for a slip triggered by an off-piste skier to fall onto a lower piste.

Also I didn't say that the pisteurs had screwed up - I didn't have enough facts - I raised a question.

david duval has given more information now (thanks) and it is clear that the skier screwed up badly. The line he describes is exactly the one that I refered to in the second part of my post. It is much more dodgy. To ski that on a day with level 4 warnings and the piste closed? Nuts. It's not extreme but it is 35-40 degrees in the upper/mid section and the snow doesn't seem to consolidate that well.

I skied it early on a powder morning once but only because I followed a couple of lifties. As we left M, one turned to me and shouted "distance". I gave them plenty of space.

J

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I read the above thread, and like the rest of the readers here take it as sobering reminder of the dangers of skiing and the respect that needs to be shown to the mountain even when you may consider it 'safe'.

Question - how do you convey this same respect to friends who have that 'it will never happen to me attitude'? I have some friends who are so bent on off-piste that a level 4 warning would still see them boarding the so-called 'safe' off piste as described in the above incidents without the appropriate kit because in their minds they are not 'really' going off-piste?

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A couple of years ago, I visited La Plagne for the first time. We had just had the first really major snowFall of the season and we hit the slopes with so much new snow that the only aparent difference between on and off piste was that the piste had poles on both sides.

In my exuberance I was 'slaloming' the piste markers (on a blue run) when suddenly my skis stopped and I found myself face down, my feet clearing the tips of my skis by a few inches.

All the fluffy new snow had filled in a rather large hole, my skis had just dropped into it and stuck. Now, this woke me up to the fact that I knew nothing about the terain of La Plagne and that the real difference between on and off piste was that U wouldn't get such a nasty surprise on piste.
Off piste, even by just 2 feet, you're on your own as far as making judgements about what's suitable to ski.

I felt silly and vulnerable and I went and hired a local guide (and got the best snow of my life!).

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Pisteurs are brilliant - they're very well qualified (difficult exams) and founts of knowledge, but they certainly can't be expected to cater for every idiot. If a run is closed it's closed - they shouldn't have to do more than that. Ours are fantastic.

easiski, they also have to recover the bodies after some of these idiots demonstrate their complete stupidity.

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david duval, excuse my query, and I am trying to tread very carerfully here, but I am a tad confused about the precise details of this unfortunate Courchevel avalanche.
In your first post you state “I did a little off piste in lovely powder but always worried about the stability, until I was doing one bit under a chairlift (suise chair 1850) when I heard some shouts from above me telling me there have been an avalanche lower down underneath the chairlift”. At this point there is general sympathy for the guy caught in the avalanche.
Later you posted “It wasn't that high up under the suise chair it was lower down where they had accessed the slope from the top of piste M. This run was closed and loads of warnings of avalanches.” And by now this poor guy has become a pariah.
My confusion is if the slope was closed and dangerous further down, how about the bit you were on further up?
We are all idiots at times. Me especially.
I had no real idea of what the risk figures actually mean until a friend was caught and buried head down in an avalanche last January. Fortunately her legs were left sticking out and the rest of her party were unscathed so she was quickly dug out. The risk level was 4, and I would have – up to that day – quite happily gone off on to that tempting off-piste that lies adjacent to the groomed piste. No more.

I have another query. On wandering around the internet on that day I noted that for many resorts the avalanche risk was quoted as 4/5. What does that mean? My “informer” tells me that 4/5 means it is really 5, but that would mean closing the resort and giving out refunds, so they fudge the issue and call it 4/5.
At this level of risk, avalanches off-piste are expected and avalanches on-piste are possible. Any off-piste skiing is foolish.

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Jonpim, not sure if I'm missing your point but david duval talks about coming down under the suisse chair and I assumed he'd come from the top of it but the unfortunate parties had come down off M and were cutting down towards the Suisse chair and piste - to my knowledge M wasn't open at that point nor had it been. Jedster rightly says that M is not extreme but it is one of the steeper blacks in Courchevel (nay the whole 3V) and I can't bring to mind how you would drop off the right of it to the Suisse area but it must be damned steep there.

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stevew, thank you for putting my right on that one. I have not been to Courchevel for ages and stupidly did not check the piste map. I clearly owe david duval a massive apology for suggesting he was at fault in skiing a closed slope. I am off down the garden to eat some more worms.

Help!!

Courchevel avalanche

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